Math for Life: Crucial Ideas You Didn't Learn in School

Jeffrey Bennett


Roberts and Company Publishers | 2011 | 189 páginas 

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• How can we solve the national debt crisis? 

• Should you or your child take on a student loan? 

• Is it safe to talk on a cell phone while driving? 

• Are there viable energy alternatives to fossil fuels? 

• Could simple policy changes reduce political polarization? 

These questions may all seem very different, but they share two things in common. First, they are all questions with important implications for either personal success or our success as a nation. Second, they all concern topics that we can fully understand only with the aid of clear quantitative or mathematical thinking. In other words, they are topics for which we need math for life--a kind of math that looks quite different from most of the math that we learn in school, but that is just as (and often more) important.
     In Math for Life, award-winning author Jeffrey Bennett simply and clearly explains the key ideas of quantitative reasoning and applies them to all the above questions and many more. He also uses these questions to analyze our current education system, identifying both shortfalls in the teaching of mathematics and solutions for our educational future.
     No matter what your own level of mathematical ability, and no matter whether you approach the book as an educator, student, or interested adult, you are sure to find something new and thought-provoking in Math for Life.
Table of Contents
Preface
1 (Don’t Be) “Bad at Math”
2 Thinking with Numbers
3 Statistical Thinking
4 Managing Your Money
5 Understanding Taxes
6 The U.S. Deficit and Debt
7 Energy Math
8 The Math of Political Polarization
9 The Mathematics of Growth
Epilogue: Getting “Good at Math”
To Learn More
Acknowledgments
Also by Jeffrey Bennett
Index
Index of Examples